Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a system and method for recognizing user gestures and interpreting these as commands for a computing device.
Description of the Related Art
There is growing desire to allow users to interact with computing devices without the need for the direct manipulation of a hardware device. By providing appropriate user gesture and action recognition, a combination of computer hardware and software is able to interpret the movements of a user as input in such a manner that the user is able to control the computing device without directly manipulating hardware.
For example, gaming consoles such as the Xbox 360® and the Nintendo Wii® are able to interpret user gestures as user input to allow control of these devices by gesture alone. The Nintendo Wii® makes use of the hand-held controller referred to as the Wii-remote. The Xbox 360® makes use of the Kinect® hardware add-on to allow for gesture recognition. The Wii-remote requires the manipulation of hardware in that a user is required to move the remote to interact with the computing device.
The Kinect system used with the Xbox 360® provides for a combination of an RGB and an infra-red camera. Although the manner in which this system operates is not public, the need for relying on an infra-red camera suffers from a number of disadvantages such as, for example, the inability to interpret information in different ambient light conditions, such as for example an outdoor environment.
All of the prior art gesture recognition systems and software suffer from the disadvantage that they process all, or substantially all, of the information captured. This results in the need to process significant amounts of irrelevant information thereby slowing down the processing time required.
Furthermore, prior art systems require significant calibration calculations which interfere with a user's experience as the user must first allow the system to calibrate before being able to use the system.